A delegation of 150 leaders of the American Jewish Congress told Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller yesterday they vigorously opposed, as unconstitutional, the Governor’s revised plan to provide State funds for private and sectarian college students.
“Public funds should be used to support public educational institutions,” Stanley H. Lowell, the delegation’s spokesman, told the Governor at a meeting in his office here. The American Jewish Congress leader said the Governor’s latest student-aid plan still violated a provision of the State Constitution forbidding use of public funds “directly or indirectly” in aid of sectarian schools or colleges.
“The American Jewish Congress is vigorously opposed to legislation that attaches aid to private and sectarian colleges as the price for vitally needed improvement and strengthening of New York’s system of higher education,” Mr. Lowell declared.
Another organization spokesman, Leo Pfeffer, told the Governor that the use of public funds for sectarian colleges would be both a “breach of separation of church and state and a danger to the independence of church-connected colleges from ultimate state control.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
